Poppy growers see no way out
As opium poppies bloom, Mexico seeks to halt the heroin trade, reports Lizbeth Diaz, of Reuters.
IN the mountains of Mexico’s tropical sierra, an evergrowing expanse of pink poppy flowers has pushed prices so low for opium paste, the gummy raw ingredient of heroin, that farmer Santiago Sanchez worries how he will feed and clothe his family.
The area of Mexico that illegally farms opium poppies grew by more than onefifth last year, to an area the size of Philadelphia, according to a United Nationsbacked study published in November.
That, along with a trend toward mixing synthetic opiate fentanyl in Mexico’s tarry black heroin, has slashed what criminal gangs pay farmers like Sanchez for a kilo of opium. Now, Sanchez earns about $US260 ($NZ384) per kilo, a fifth of the average price two years ago.
While Mexico’s top drug traffickers still make billions of dollars supplying addicts in the United States, at the bottom of the supply chain the villagers are hardly surviving.
‘‘We can’t keep living like this,’’ said Sanchez, who is a local leader in the remote Mixtec Indian village of Juquila Yucucani, where hundreds of poppy farmers have seen already meagre incomes shrivel.
‘‘We can barely afford our food.’’
Heroin trade
In the US, overdose deaths from opioids have increased almost sixfold in the past two decades, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 15,000 people died of heroin overdoses in 2017 alone.
Heroin from Mexico accounted for 86% of the heroin found on US streets, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most recent annual narcotic report.
The heart of illegal poppy cultivation is in the hills of Guerrero state, in some of the poorest mountain districts — such as Juquila Yucucani, some 1290km south of the USMexican border. Guerrero is now among the country’s bloodiest states.
Despite unprecedented violence across the country, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said recently the Government had ‘‘officially’’ ended its war against drug trafficking, a militaryled offensive launched in 2006 that led to a surge in bloodshed as criminal groups splintered.
The Government’s focus would now be on meeting the needs of marginalised communities, Lopez Obrador said, as part of a broader strategy to curb an illegal drug trade that was thriving despite the capture of highprofile kingpins like Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman, who is on trial in New York for drug trafficking that spanned more than two decades.
Lopez Obrador has not entirely turned his back on using soldiers to tackle violence stemming from drugs — he plans to create a new militarised National Guard police force. But he is also exploring a crop substitution programme, relaxing prohibition and amnesties for lowlevel drug dealers and farmers.
On a visit to Guerrero in January, Lopez Obrador pledged price supports for grains, including about $US300 a tonne for corn, part of a strategy meant to give farmers alternatives to planting illicit crops.
‘‘Here, in the hills, we are going to pay a little more, so that corn is planted and people are compensated for their effort. So that other crops are not planted,’’ he said.
Lopez Obrador has backed a legislative Bill to legalise marijuana, and along with the former head of Mexico’s military and other members of his team, he suggested last autumn that legalising medical opium could be part of the solution.
The Government appears to be backing away from that idea after opposition from the US.
‘We are not traffickers’
The farmers in Juquila Yucucani do not consider themselves criminals, and say current poppy eradication efforts by the army also sometimes destroy legal crops.
‘‘They have killed the food crops that my family use to eat,’’ said Lazaro Lopez, who wanted the military to apologise.
Although Reuters could not independently verify Lopez’ account, human rights groups have documented military abuses in parts of Guerrero. The army did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
For Sanchez, who said his village would embrace legalisation, crop substitution is a poor alternative.
Other than poppies, few plants take to the thin soil on Juquila Yucucani’s stony slopes. Some land was apt for planting mango or avocado trees, Sanchez said, but they would take years to mature.
The narrow ribbon of twisted dirt road connecting the village to the outside world would make it almost impossible to transport bulky or delicate crops to markets, he said.
Arturo Garcia, a farmers’ rights activist in the state, said the Government’s new ideas would only work if a really sustained and wellfunded effort was made to offer residents a way out of the drug trade.
‘‘The state must throw all its weight into this region so that it begins to alleviate the conditions that have allowed violence,’’ he said.
For now, several hours’ journey from the nearest hospitals or schools, Juquila Yucucani’s poppy farmers say they have two choices to make a living: sneak illegally into the US or grow poppies.
‘‘We are not drug traffickers — we want a dignified life,’’said elderly Nieves Garcia, who has grown poppies since she was a child.
‘‘My kids have left this place because there’s no way of getting ahead,’’ she said.